Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia

We have a rule against liking bands that name themselves after wildly overrated artists and write songs about people like Nietzsche and Mohammed, but it looks like we’re going to have to make an exception for the Dandy Warhols. Their third album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, has the downtown avant-garde sensibility of their patron saints, the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, but it also has a diverse array of pop hooks and a classic rock crunch—making it palatable to those of us who never considered going to art school. As if to prove that they’re not the heroin-addled, high-cheekboned, leather-pants-wearing poseurs that they appear to be, they skewer that whole gig on the Kinks-y “Cool Scene,” and then do it again, riding a classic Stones guitar riff through the equally pointed “Bohemian Like You.” We’re convinced.